I do not think it Utopian to present to children a fair share of stories which deal with the importance of things "untouched by hand." They, too, can learn at an early age that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are spiritual." To those who wish to try the effect of such stories on children, I present for their encouragement the following lines from James Whitcomb Riley: THE TREASURE OF THE WISE MAN[37] Oh, the night was dark and the night was late, When the robbers came to rob him; And they picked the lock of his palace-gate, The robbers who came to rob him--; They picked the lock of the palace-gate, Seized his jewels and gems of State, His coffers of gold and his priceless plate,-- The robbers that came to rob him. But loud laughed he in the morning red!-- For of what had the robbers robbed him? Ho! hidden safe, as he slept in bed, When the robbers came to rob him,-- They robbed him not of a golden shred Of the childish dreams in his wise old head- "And they're welcome to all things else," he said, When the robbers came to rob him. There is a great deal of this romantic spirit, combined with a delightful sense of irresponsibility, which I claim above all things for small children, to be found in our old nursery rhymes. I quote from the following article written by the Rev. R. L. Gales for the _Nation_. After speaking on the subject of fairy stories being eliminated from the school curriculum, the writer adds: "This would be lessening the joy of the world and taking from generations yet unborn the capacity for wonder, the power to take a large unselfish interest in the spectacle of things, and putting them forever at the mercy of small private cares. "A nursery rhyme is the most sane, the most unselfish thing in the world. It calls up some delightful image--a little nut-tree with a silver walnut and a golden pear; some romantic adventure only for the child's delight and liberation from the bondage of unseeing dullness: it brings before the mind the quintessence of some good thing: "'The little dog laughed to see such sport'--there is the soul of good humor, of sanity, of health in the laughter of that innocently wicked little dog. It is the laughter of pure frolic without unkindness. To have laughed with the little dog as a child is the best preservative against mirthless laughter in later years--the horse laughter of brutality, the ugly laughter of spite, the acrid laughter of fanaticism. The world of nursery rhymes, the old world of Mrs. Slipper-Slopper, is the world of natural things, of quick, healthy motion, of the joy of living.